


Report to a Philosophical Society Concerning a Most Curious Tentacle'd Creature

by TF Grognon (gloss)



Category: Original Work
Genre: 19th Century Natural History, Human BDSMs Tentacle Monster - Freeform, Non-Sexual Kink, Other, Rope Bondage, Training (Obedience and Submission), Weird Romance, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25430965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/TF%20Grognon
Summary: "Mr. Mayhew's devoted monster," the crewmen called it. Among themselves, no doubt, they used far more licentious and ribald terms.A naturalist trains his love.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Tentacle Creature
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14
Collections: Obedience and Trust Flash Exchange





	Report to a Philosophical Society Concerning a Most Curious Tentacle'd Creature

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ba_lailah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ba_lailah/gifts).



> This story plays fast and loose with C19 Anglophone naturalists (like Darwin, Bates, and Russel Wallace) exploring new landscapes (worlds?). In addition to them, it is also indebted to Thrush's Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (Yale UP, 2016).

"Mr. Mayhew's devoted monster," the crewmen called it. Among themselves, no doubt, they used far more licentious and ribald terms.

Mayhew encountered the creature first at dusk, deep in a jungle valley. He mistook it for a large bat, then a fungal protuberance: it was dark as the night and turgid. What he'd taken for the movement of wings was in fact an unquiet surface, alive with bristles and lengthening vibrissae. As he leaned closer, the feelers extended yet further, and the thing grew, and grew. Soon he stood before a trembling column as its sweet, sticky cirri brushed his face. They lingered over his eyes and mouth; a sucker applied itself to the center of his forehead.

Warmth bathed Mayhew then. Nothing like the claustrophobic heat of the jungle around him, this warmth radiated from his spine and tingled all the way down each capillary in every extremity. He opened his eyes and beheld light, the twin of his own warmth, beating through the column. They regarded each other as understanding bloomed between them.

It was not a single thing, but a composite, a mass of feelers and tentacles, vines and hungry little mouths, eyestalks and whiskers and tendrils.

It followed him from that place and never left his side again.

Mayhew studied it for hours on end, searching for some pattern in its profusion of appendages. He was disappointed every time. There was no symmetry to be descried; there was, instead, constant, shifting development and retraction, genesis and apocalypse. It differed from moment to moment, and Mayhew was hard-put to describe it at all meaningfully. Logically, it simply could not be the same creature that it was five minutes ago, last night, the previous month.

It exceeded, swelled, overran all logical and classificatory pens. 

This ought to have disturbed him. Revolted him. Driven him to violence.

Mayhew, however, experienced no such impulse. The creature fascinated him and repaid his attention with ever-unfolding revelations and delights. It knew his moods, and responded to them, gamboling when he was glum, pulsing thoughtfully as he prepared specimens, dancing euphorically when he was pleased.

He'd been a solitary boy, more friendly to the beetles and mosses of southwestern Gloucestershire than any sentient soul. Even time away at university did not elicit sociability; instead, estrangement from his fellows drove him deeper into solitude and strengthened his bonds with small, creeping, curious things.

His uncle arranged for him an appointment as surgeon's assistant and naturalist on H.M.S. _Sils Maria_ and her voyage through one of the smaller, newly-dilated bourns. Most reluctantly, Mayhew left his crawly, pupating, budding companions. The likelihood of return through a bourn was nearly impossible to calculate. 

Three months of troubled stomach and unquiet mind later, however, brought him here — a large, yet-to-be-surveyed country replete with curious fossils and dense jungles, long-abandoned temples and frothing rivers.

And his new love.

"You'll be bringing it home, then?" said Captain Soule. He never quite looked at the creature straight-on. 

Mayhew had already sent four crates of plated, pinned specimens back through the bourn via packet ship. He had seven different papers at various stages of production, concerning the geology, culture, and natural history of this world. His reports to various learned societies were, he'd been informed, eagerly anticipated.

"Yes," Mayhew said after a bit, after Soule had cleared his throat. "Yes, I suppose so."

"Best train it up, then," Soule told him. He groaned as he stood, knees cracking, then added, wiping his mouth, "Seen it too often, hauling home a savage."

"It's not —" Mayhew bit his lip. "It's not a savage."

"No, I expect not," Soule replied. He thumped Mayhew hard on the shoulder. "Gracious knows what it is, eh?"

A wonder, a mystery, that was what it was. A surfeit.

Having cajoled a set of good, strong ropes from the bosun and a cast-off gorget from the Vice-Governor on the mainland, he set about training the creature.

The gorget served as both collar and corset, binding the creature's constant motion to something roughly vertical. The ropes, which tore at his soft hands, he employed both as further binding and ad-hoc whip.

The creature allowed this treatment with an air of quivering, yet restrained, judgment. Patches on its larger tentacles flashed indigo and purple, promising anger, only to recede to blushing pinks when Mayhew bowed his head and whispered apologies.

"You know what to do," he reminded the creature. Their kinship was such that each knew the other's mind as intimately as the landscapes of their home. (Mayhew did not attempt to transcribe this understanding; it was at once beyond words and far too simple for them. He trusted, however, that such understanding was reciprocated.)

The creature drew itself up, becoming just twelve tentacles, thick as young birch trunks. They glowed a little despite the glare of the noon sun.

Mayhew tugged on the lead rope. "Forward."

It hesitated. He imagined what he wanted it to do — mince forward as daintily as a maid in a song — and, after a moment, the creature complied. It swelled and pushed forward, displacing itself, perched on tiny, curved claws.

"Excellent!" Mayhew slackened the rope in order to applaud. 

The creature's skin rippled with rosy hues. He read its joy in what he saw, but also how they felt, together. It started to move forward again, plumping up, then puffing forward.

"No! Not until —" Mayhew jerked on the rope. The creature ignored him, determined to close the distance between them. "Stop!"

It did not. Mayhew raised the other rope, lashing the creature's side. For a wild interval, all that mattered were the ache in his arm, the screech of the rope sawing open the air, the brutal power of expressing his will as baldly as humanly possible. 

The creature took the blow, never cringing away. Dark speckles deepened where it had been hit. Its body appeared to tighten, harden over, until it looked more crustacean than Mayhew had ever before perceived.

"On my word," he told it. "On my word."

It did not, at first reply. He could feel it thinking, as one felt the approach of horses on dirt, but he could not discern _what_ it thought. It was all evidence, no content, no signification.

The creature shimmered in the strong sun. For several moments, it seemed to lose volume.

Mayhew held his breath.

Its luster blinking, then catching bright, the creature returned to its usual mass. It consisted now of just three tentacles, pink as the dawn. It told him, with bowed posture and quiet grace, that it awaited his instruction. 

He exhaled. Gratitude overwhelmed him.

This, too, the creature accepted sweetly. He held the rope, but they moved together.


End file.
